The line went dead. His son sounded hurt. Good. Their rift was finally getting to him. His mother had coddled him, and now that she was gone, he was finally faced with having to grow up, whatever that meant these days.
Valentine checked the ticket again. The return had been left open. Neat-he could fly home once Gerry was safely back in New York. All of a sudden Las Vegas in the middle of August sounded like a nice weekend getaway.
He went to the bedroom and pulled a suitcase from the closet and started tossing clothes into it.
4
Nick Nicocropolis's father had been a sponge diver in Tarpon Springs, Florida, as had his father before him. It was dangerous work, perhaps the most dangerous profession in the world, and both men had died a few months apart while plying their trade, his father from the bends, his grandfather from a hammerhead's bite. Neither had carried insurance, leaving Nick to support his mother, three sisters, and an elderly grandmother at the tender age of sixteen.
Quitting high school had been much easier than finding gainful employment. He was small, five-six and one- forty, and because most Greeks were inherently superstitious, no one on the sponge docks would employ him as a diver, which happened to be the only decent-paying work around. So he'd taken to hustling pool in tourist bars and cheating at cards and loan-sharking and running a sleazy escort service and stealing rental cars at Tampa International Airport just to make ends meet. It was nickel-and-dime crap, and he'd humped it until his mother and grandmother were pushing up daisies and his sisters were in school or hitched. Then he'd packed his bags and headed west. The year was 1965.
Thirty-four years later, Nick Nicocropolis could look back and be proud. His childhood had been hardscrabble, but so what? Losing Gramps and his old man in the same year had been rough, but their losses had also taught him lessons that he might otherwise never have learned. It had hardened him, and in that hardness Nick found a strength he had not known he possessed. A callous had formed over the aching hole in his heart, and from that he had grown strong.
'Fontaine disappeared,' Nick said, repeating Sammy Mann's words. 'In broad daylight, he walked into the parking lot and vanished. How does that work? Trapdoor?'
'I think they use mirrors,' Sammy said.
'Who?' Nick said.
'Siegfried and Roy. You know, the elephant.'
'Sigmund Freud? Why the hell are you bringing them up?'
'I thought that's what you meant.'
In anger, Nick slapped the expansive granite desk in his penthouse office. Biting off the end of a cigar, he spit it into the trash. 'Every day, I look out my window at those two Krauts stealing the crowds from my casino. You think I give a rat's ass how they make the elephant vanish? What I'm asking you, numb nuts, is how Fontaine managed to shake the tail you had on him.'
Sammy shrugged his shoulders, wishing he knew. Fontaine had sauntered around the casino into the covered parking lot, ducked behind a concrete pillar, and vanished into thin air. The tail never saw him again.
'We think he changed clothes and ducked into another car,' Sammy explained. 'That's all we can figure. He left his rental with the keys in the ignition.'
'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Nick said sarcastically, 'changed his britches and ran. What am I paying you for, anyway? I spend thirty years working my balls off trying to do someone a favor and you let a guy who's ripping me off take a walk. Jesus Christ.'
Sammy hung his head in shame. His employer was the last of a dying breed, a hard headed little jerk who'd refused to sell out to the big hotel chains and was now paying the price for his hubris. The Acropolis could not afford to be ripped off on a regular basis without Nick's getting a distress call from the bank.
'Sorry, boss,' he said.
'What about the girl?' Nick said.
'We had her arrested this afternoon.'
'She post bail?'
'Not yet.'
'You sure she was in on it?'
'Sure, I'm sure,' Sammy said. 'I've got the whole thing on video.'
'I saw it,' Nick reminded him, sticking the unlit cigar between his teeth, 'and I didn't see her doing a frigging thing.'
'She was signaling him,' Sammy said defensively.
'You're sure?'
'Of course I'm sure.'
'Then why didn't you bust Fontaine when you had the chance?'
'Because I wanted to watch the video a few times. I didn't want to accuse either of them before I was sure.'
'But now you're sure.'
'Now I'm sure.'
'One-hundred-percent-positive sure?'
Sammy grunted. There were times when he'd prefer starving on Social Security than listening to Nick's line of crap.
Nick sensed Sammy's displeasure. His unlit cigar took on the appearance of a living thing as it wiggled in his mouth. 'What about Gaming Control?' he asked.
'They're not on our side on this one,' Sammy said.
'You're shitting me.'
'Look,' Sammy said, 'I can prove Nola was cheating. Every time she checked her hole card, she signaled its identity to Fontaine.'
'How?'
'When she was pat, she leaned on the table with her nondeck hand. When she was stiff, she pulled back.'
'Will it hold up in court?'
'Wily hired a consultant to back me up. Some retired dick from New Jersey.'
'From Jersey? You're shitting me.'
'He's supposed to be the best.'
Nick chewed away, not liking it. Without Gaming Control on their side, he'd probably lose in court. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to press charges. If word got out he was going soft on hustlers, his joint would be labeled a candy store, and he'd have more cheats at his tables than an outhouse has flies.
'How long she been working for us?' Nick asked.
'Almost ten years,' Sammy replied.
'Any trouble before?'
'No, sir. She's been faithful.'
'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Nick yammered like an old Beatles song. 'Quit blowing me. Dealers don't turn rotten overnight. She's probably screwed us before.'
Sammy's eyes had gotten sore looking through Nola Briggs's evaluation reports. A sheet was filled out by the pit bosses each week that served as the dealers' report card, with marks for attitude, appearance, customer comments, and most important, the dealers' win and loss percentages. Nothing in Nola's records suggested that she'd been anything but a model employee until now.
'I don't think so,' Sammy replied.
'You contradicting me?' Nick asked sharply.
'You pay me to tell you the truth,' Sammy said. 'I'm just earning my money, that's all.'
